Tallgrass

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT TALLGRASS - PAGE 2

As a volunteer working to restore prairie communities and as an animal rights proponent concerned for the humane treatment of all animals, I have an active interest in the deer management program of the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County. From my own field observations, I conclude that the abatement of deer populations in DuPage County is necessary and urgent. Although I'd prefer another alternative to killing the deer, there are presently no alternatives which will accomplish what really needs to be done at once.

When some people get together, they can`t help but make a great team. Fred and Ginger, Laurel and Hardy, Batman and Robin, Wilbur and Orville Wright, Ben and Jerry (the ice cream kings), Tom and Jerry (the cartoon kings), Tom and Bob (the food kings). Granted, the last team is not quite as well known as the others, but that's changing. In 10 years, this pair has started three successful food enterprises and restored a good portion of downtown Lockport in the process. J. Thomas Alves and Robert Burcenski own the Tallgrass restaurant, 1006 State St., Lockport, the McDonald building two doors north, and the Public Landing restaurant farther north at 200 W. 8th St. Two other men are scheduled to open a small brewery-restaurant next year in the Norton building, which Alves and Burcenski also own. A lot of people go into business with partners.

Nearly five months after the Tribune's eloquent Sept. 10 editorial in support of prairie preservation, and after receiving 123 letters or cards and 2,500 petition signatures in support of that cause, the Glenview Village Board voted to preserve 14 acres of rare tallgrass prairie at the former Naval Air Station. Unfortunately, the trustees ignored expert testimony about the need for a large buffer zone to protect the plants and provide habitat for rare or endangered grassland birds: the upland sandpipers, short-eared owls, bobolinks, meadowlarks, sedge wrens, grasshopper sparrows and other birds that are dying out in Illinois for lack of habitat.

As a supporter of, and participant in, the restoration of natural areas in Lake County, I don't totally disagree with Rob Humpf's assertion that "4.5 billion years can't be wrong." ("Trouble in prairieland," Metro, Oct. 6). It is only the past 300 years or so with which I have a problem. Until then, nature did take its course. Here in northern Illinois, the landscape was one of millions of acres of tallgrass savannahs, rich in color and variety of plants, punctuated by stands of centuries-old oak and hickory trees.

Legislation that would advance plans for the transfer and conversion of federally owned sites in Lake and Will Counties to civilian use has again moved to within a single vote of the Senate of being sent to President Clinton for his signature. As expected, on Wednesday the U.S. House passed a reconstituted defense bill that left intact language that would allow for an unusual land swap to aid civilian redevelopment at historic Ft. Sheridan in Lake County, and that calls for transfer and conversion of the Joliet Army Ammunition Plant.

Vanes gain It was because of Chicago's long-winded politicians that the city was nicknamed the Windy City, but there is no doubt that the weather has to take some blame. Kids can check it out after a workshop where they will make weathervanes, which are used to tell the direction that the wind is blowing. For inspiration they can use a photo of a bird-shaped weathervane on display in the museum's American Art Gallery. It is made out of iron and was created in Pennsylvania in the early 1800s.

Severely restricted public access to Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks has taken a toll on the facility's first seed harvest of the fall season, a spokesman said. As part of an ongoing prairie restoration project, seed harvests are scheduled annually on the laboratory grounds. In recent years, hundreds of volunteers from throughout the western suburbs have helped hand-gather seeds from plants on the site's tallgrass prairies. However, due to newly implemented security precautions, a harvest Saturday was done by only Fermilab employees.

It's harvest time on the prairie. Like farmers bringing in the year's crop, volunteers across the area are gathering seeds in the few surviving remnants of Illinois` native habitat-the tallgrass prairie, which has been reduced to less than one-tenth of a percent of its original acreage. Without such patient gatherers, the prairie preserves of the metropolitan area could not survive, let alone expand as they have during recent years as more people come to realize the importance of preserving the 300 or so species of prairie plants and the wildlife that depends on them.

With autumn here at last, Joe Nyhoff eagerly anticipates the first hard frost. He knows it will stun his "babies," his billions and billions of vegetative offspring, and start them toward a gloriously colorful death. But that's merely another phase at Goose Lake Prairie. Life and death are daily rituals in nature, where life hardly ends with death. In the miracle of Illinois` remnant tallgrass prairie, death breeds and nurtures life, cycle after procreative cycle. Nyhoff makes no bones about his favorite period at Goose Lake, the state's 3,000-acre prairie park southwest of Chicago between Wilmington and Morris.

The prairie fire now sweeping across northeastern Illinois doesn't resemble any that have preceded it. It has singed the prairie restoration movement, the darling of Midwest conservationists, with charges that the restorers have become rogue lumberjacks, clear-cutting forests to create their prized prairieland. On talk radio, people are suddenly calling prairies the playthings of "elitists." And for the first time since volunteers began restoring prairies two decades ago, prairie maintenance and restoration are being halted.